Exit, pursued by a bear

Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is not registered with the Office for Students.

It was a part of the old Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, which was – but when the six members (BOVTS, Central School of Ballet, London Contemporary Dance School, National Centre for Circus Arts, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Rambert School of Ballet) went their separate ways in 2022, it was unique in not achieving registered status.

Instead, undergraduate and postgraduate courses taught at BOVTS lead to awards made by the University of the West of England. Or, at least, they did. From today, BOVTS will no longer recruit undergraduate students – the most recent cohort (starting in 2024) will be the last.

Instead the focus will be on intensive postgraduate courses and on short courses at other levels. The traditional undergraduate model is no longer viable:

Recent challenges that are having a widespread impact across the sector have combined to make the school’s undergraduate training model financially unsustainable. These include capping of student fees, restrictions to international student visas, cuts in grants, and increases in costs of living and teaching. Furthermore, the OfS’ recent announcement that it would not be accepting applications for self-registration until August 2025 at the earliest has necessitated a completely new approach to the School’s business planning.

The school was already reeling from the end of the OfS institution specific targeted allocation – awarded to CDD but scrapped, coincidentally, at the moment of the split, But a major factor will surely be that BOVTS is no longer able to recruit international students:

Due to a recent change in the Theatre School’s governance, our higher education provider UWE Bristol is unable to issue Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) documentation for BOVTS courses. Regrettably we are therefore unable to consider applications from students requiring a visa to study in the UK for 2025 entry.

This is a strange situation. In July 2023 BOVTS had its ability to issue CAS removed when CDD folded – it was hoped that UWE, as academic partner, could pick this up as an “exceptional arrangement” in the interim while an application was prepared. Under UK Visas and Immigration rules, such arrangements are necessarily time limited and require that the majority of students at the teaching provider are or will be from the UK. But it was not to be. As BOVTS itself is not registered with OfS – and this isn’t going to change in the near future – there’s no way it can get the license, or enter into a collaboration that allows for CAS to be issued.

Even by the high standards of UK theatre schools, BOVTS has had an outsize impact: with names such as Oliva Coleman, Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart, Miranda Richardson and Daniel Day Lewis among an impressive list of alumni. The retreat from undergraduate provision is the first of what might be a series of losses to the sector that have happened because the Office for Students don’t fancy registering new (or re-registering old) providers right now.